33 staff sacked as Diamond restructures BZW

BZW yesterday sacked 33 people from its back office, sales, trading and secretarial staff as part of the radical restructuring of its global markets operation under Bob Diamond.

The sackings come hard on the heels of the departure of several senior executives following a strategic review by Mr Diamond, the recently appointed chief executive of global markets.

Klaus-Peter Moeritz, head of foreign exchange trading in the UK and Europe, also left yesterday. He was originally recruited by Alex von Ungem-Stemberg, the deputy chief executive of the markets division who resigned on Monday.

Mr Diamond, who joined BZW in July on a remuneration package that could net him more than pounds 5m in the next few years, yesterday hired Paul Thrush, former head of foreign exchange at Nationsbank, to head of foreign exchange. He replaces Mr Moeritz, but assumes a wider role.

The global markets division is receiving the brunt of the restructuring of the BZW group taking place under Bill Harrison, who was poached from Robert Fleming and took over as chief executive in September.

Senior executives who have left include Yann Gindre, head of debt origination, Nick Carter, head of swaps marketing, Paul Ellis, head of structured products, and Rob Jolliffe and Steve Honesjoint, heads of debt syndicate.

Mr Harrison said: "We are going through something of a change there [in the markets division]. That business is the one which has been through the most change."

He is dividing BZW into three main divisions - markets under Mr Diamond, equities under Steve Harker and a new investment banking division, which will soon be without a chief executive as Graham Pimlott is due to become head of strategic planning for the entire Barclays group. In addition, Mr Harrison has set up a capital markets unit run by Amir Eilon, who already works for BZW.

Mr Harrison said: "We've got equity capital markets, debt capital markets, structured products, and global derivatives. What we've done is bring that together and that reports in to the investment banking, equities and the markets business."

Investment banking had also been restructured so that "all of our major clients will have the benefit of whole range of activities in a co-ordinated way", Mr Harrison said.

Mr Harrison yesterday hired Roger Davis to become chief executive of BZW in Asia, a role vacated by John Richardson.